this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
440 points (98.7% liked)
Greentext
8477 readers
1143 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Good point.
I heard a podcast recently (99% invisible) that talked about how the "60 degree" screw became standard in the world. Before that, there were many competing types of screw, which meant that there were all kinds of incompatibilities.
What they mentioned only in passing was that the British Empire already had a standard at 55 degrees. At that point, the British empire was huge. The smart thing to do would have been to simply adopt the British standard and make it the worldwide standard. Instead, the US forced the rest of the world, including the whole British Empire to adopt the new standard.
I imagine if the US hadn't entered WWII the world might be using German standards, or it might be using British Empire standards, or maybe even Soviet standards, but it definitely wouldn't be using American standards.
Forced is kind of a strong word. The US was the first to a strong independent standardization system, even though other countries had some individual standards. The US system was effectively the inspiration for ISO in the first place, as Hoover started the US system in the 30s.
The catalyst was that American manufacturing was removed from the conflict, so the US was in the best position to become a world supplier of anything it could manufacture. Especially arms and planes etc. Everyone knew what a pain in the ass sharing arms and vehicles during WWI had been because of the lack of standardized parts, so the allies were already primed to pick a standard either way. The reason the US became the standard is because situationally it became the largest supplier of goods, and also because it had already spent thousands of hours more time on committees to decide why its standards should be what they were. Other countries hadnt done much of that legwork, nor were they risk free areas to produce things in
Bonus cat fact: Hoover had a cat that he named “Mr. Cat”